Page 52 of Evermore: Heart of the Raven

“Some were blown to nothing more than mist and water. We found random parts of others. We only found two men who were in one piece. And they were both alive. Tex couldn’t move their bodies, he was wounded. But even limping with a broken leg, he managed to give me cover while I dragged them out. Bad guys descended on us like vultures on a gut truck. We were taking serious enemy fire. The Delta guys we hauled out were both unconscious. I tried to get them to wake up and move, but they couldn’t. I threw one over my shoulder and hauled ass. Then, I went back for the other one. They both survived. But I was seriously fucked up.

“I was burned pretty badly on my back and actually took a round to my leg, but I didn’t feel it until the medics arrived. I spent two weeks in a hospital bed down the hall from three guys in the Brotherhood and six men from my detachment. The guys I pulled out were in there a lot longer. The whole time I laid in that hospital, all I could think about was Shana. I blamed myself for her affairs. If I’d only been there, she wouldn’t have needed to go anywhere else. I’d failed her as a husband, and I was wrecked. I decided to go home and make things work.”

“What happened?” I ask. Tears streak down my face. I can hear the emotion in Connor’s voice as he relives the gruesome events he’s just entrusted to me.

“When I got back, I called her to come pick me up, but she didn’t answer her phone,” Connor relays painfully. “A buddy of mine drove me home. Her car was in the driveway, but she didn’t answer when I called out her name from the foyer. I searched the whole house. I found her in our bed.

“She was dead.” The words echo around us in the quiet darkness, bouncing off the walls and ceiling only to come stabbing us in the heart over and over again like a ricocheting bullet.

“The sheets were soaked with her blood. There were empty pill bottles all over the floor. She’d cut her wrists. And she had my pistol next to her on the pillow in case that hadn’t worked. It was my birthday. And my wife killed herself in our bed. On my fucking birthday!”

I audibly gasp. My stomach clenches in a sudden burst of roiling acid. I feel physically sick.

“There was so much fucking blood.” Connor’s voice breaks. Torrents of tears tumble down his troubled face. I just hold him tighter. His arms cling to me as if it is to the last vestiges of sanity he has. I don’t know if there’s more to his story, and honestly don’t know if I’m strong enough to hear more. But I sit quietly, letting him finish.

“She was pregnant, Lainey. The baby wasn’t mine, and she didn’t even try to hide it. She put it right there in her suicide note.” He’s shaking now. “She tried to see if there was anything left between us before I left. And I’d told her I wanted a divorce. The baby’s father didn’t want anything to do with her. He denied it was even his. She didn’t want to have a baby alone and said she couldn’t believe I’d want to raise it with her since I didn’t even want to be married to her anymore.

“I spent two more weeks in the hospital after trying to wrap my car around a tree doing eighty-five drunk on tequila. Ox and Tori put me there. A rehab place for broken people. I was as broken as they come. It’s taken a long time to climb back from that hell, Lainey. Five long years. And I can’t even bear to think of her face in that damned sketchbook. I don’t want you to see her ugliness. I don’t want it to touch you. But now you know. You know what a fucked-up man I really am. I failed her. I failed those men. I failed them all.”

Neither of us speaks for a long time. I’m numb. But I can’t judge. Not after what I had done. Not after everything that happened at Juilliard and then with Jemmy. I want to tell him I understand that level of pain. I’ve lived in that hell, too, and sometimes feel like I still am. But I can’t. It’s all too much. I want to give him my truth, my compassion and whatever comfort he needs. But there’s nothing I can give him. Nothing but me, and my own brokenness.

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